The cemetery outliers are all here. Silver gelatin flaking with weathered age. Sun-soaked and disappearing to time. Cracked by a century’s worth of freeze-thaw cycles. Behatted with a gaping wound across the brow as if struck by a vandal’s hammer. In one case, marvelous indigo Lucite glowing brightly in the afternoon sun but no longer protecting any recognizable image within.

Such is the fate of an early technology meant to immortalize not only the name of the departed, but also their visage.

In our last venture to Economy Cemetery, we focused on a particular subset of ceramic photographic discs inset to the cemetery’s grave markers. Those pictured appear to have left the earth’s bounds and gone straight into the aether. This week, we’re looking at another grouping of damaged portraits from the same hallowed ground. These are the crook’d and crack’d, the maimed and disappeared. They’re equally beautiful, magical, and tragic, but by a whole different measure.

For every portrait, there is a profound revelation in recognizing the exact moment in time when we experience these strangers’ final posthumous interaction with our own. Nothing lasts forever and any attempt to contradict that basic truth is doomed to its own cruel fate.

Enjoy me now, each of these disappearing portraits seems to say, we won’t be here forever.